"Over the past several years, interest in technology and in the history of technology has been growing. The Timetables of Technology provides a rich resource of information on this subject. It contains a chronological timeline of the significant events in the history of technology, plus profiles of important figures, and essays on key subjects and trends." "The book is divided into sections that correspond to various historical eras in the development of technology, each section beginning with an overview of the period. Read in sequence, these overviews provide a brief history of technology." "The Timetables of Technology contains over 5,000 entries organized by different fields: among them, architecture and construction, communication, energy, food and agriculture, materials, medical technology, tools and devices, and transportation. The Timetables format provides instant access to key events in all these disciplines year by year and sets them in context with a column of general entries. At chronologically appropriate points, the entries are supplemented by essays on such subjects as the first machines, city life, inventing writing and the alphabet, cathedrals, gunpowder and guns in East and West, the age of canals, color and chemistry, first-generation computers, and communicating with light. There are also biographical profiles of important figures in the history of technology, such as Archimedes, Al-Jazari, the Montgolfier brothers, Eli Whitney, Thomas Alva Edison, Elmer Sperry, and Grace Murray Hopper." "Like its companion volumes The Timetables of Science - which was praised by Scientific American as "a careful, useful resource for all, for school library and book-loving home" - this book will be a valuable reference for libraries, schools, and universities, as well as for anyone curious about how the modern world came to be."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved